Trust Your Nose
by BC
Summary: A bit of fix-it, a little cuteness and some puppy-piles. A four-year-old Naruto makes canine friends and grows up with them.
1. Puppy Summoner

Summary: A bit of fix-it, a little cuteness and some puppy-piles. A four-year-old Naruto makes canine friends and grows up with them.

Warnings: AU, fluff and crackish humor, not-stupid Naruto, child abuse

A/N: I should stop reading fanfiction. When I read fanfiction, I get inspired to write fanfiction. Then I write fanfiction. This is turning out to be a problem.

Because then I don't write my own stuff. Oh, pox on me anyway. Please, send me some support while I try to convince myself that the overabundance of books in bookshops doesn't mean I should just give up and not bother the world with my graphomania.

x

Chapter One: Puppy Summoner

x

It was barely after dark, and they were already well on their way to getting drunk.

Stars came out, the sky lit up red and violet and green and yellow with fireworks, kids screamed and yelled and chased each other in between the stalls, hands sticky with sugar. Teenagers paired off, stealing a moment to cuddle here and there, while adults pretended to not see them. Most people celebrated, remembering the Yondaime who had saved them all, saved the entire village, at the cost of his life.

A few mourned quietly in their homes or in the silent spaces among other people, hoping to share in on a bit of the happiness to alleviate the pain of their losses.

And then there were this type: the ones who went straight for the sake to have an excuse to act like beasts. They cursed, teased one another and when they found a victim they cracked cruel jokes. Tomorrow they would go to their jobs as maintenance men, builders, accountants and cooks, but tonight they were celebrating their own worth.

"Kentarou-san, you won't believe what I'm seein'," said the man seated at the corner of the counter of an improvised bar. The bar was easily five times as big as the other stalls, with tall barstools in front of it and a few perpendicular counters for those customers who were willing to drink standing up. The amount of alcohol flowing was a lush if not entirely fitting tribute to the deceased former Hokage.

"You're right, Asoba-san," replied the one probably called Kentarou, even though they could mostly be differentiated only by their yukata. "I can't believe it."

"I love sake," a third man grumbled into his cup and motioned the barkeep to pour him another.

The whole group turned, one by one, until they were all staring at the child crouching next to an empty wooden box. The crate had been used to transport bottles, but now it was designated as kindling for the bonfire they would light later that night.

"Blond," one man said.

"Alone," another added.

"The right age," the woman behind the counter noted, eyes dark beneath her fringe, mouth down-turned.

"Filthy like a pig," Kentarou finished, grinning widely.

The child looked up at them through wide blue eyes and wiped its face into its mud-stained t-shirt. The action revealed a hint of six whisker-like markings under the layer of grime.

"Look at it," Asoba mocked. "It's _harmless_." To prove his assertion, he picked up his discarded dango stick and threw it at the brat.

He didn't hit the kid, and the stick fell flatly into the dust, but the boy flinched away anyway, and set off a wave of laughter among the men.

"Yeah," Kentarou said with tipsy satisfaction, and paused to down his sake. "Yondaime-sama was a genius. Sealed all its power away. It's just a retarded little bastard now." He spat on the ground.

"Look'im." The markedly drunker barber sitting at Kentarou's left gesticulated in the direction of the cowering boy, swinging his cup up and down and sloshing liquid all over his companions. He set the suddenly empty cup down, pulled out a box, and out of that box recovered a piece of fruit. "Oooh, wanna apple, lil' monster? Wanna?"

The boy shuffled closer, staying close to the ground, but he was staring at the candied apple – bright red like fire – with undisguised fascination. Probably never had seen anything like it, in whatever pit of hell things like him usually lived.

"C'mon, I'll give ya apple. C'mon-" The man lobbed the apple, more by chance than actual skill hitting his target straight in the face. "There!"

The child cried out and grabbed his eye, leaving the apple on the ground. Pity. It could probably still be washed. Even so it was more of a treat than he probably ever got.

"Pow!" cheered a stooped old man in a scruffy hat. "Right inna face!"

"Wanna 'nother one?" the barber inquired, pulling out another apple that was supposed to be a present for his own child, but whatever, they were spoiled little brats anyway, it was a lot more fun to hit this little beast in the face. Whoosh-pow! Ding-dong! Like a game.

"Is the lil' monster hurt?" he mocked.

He suddenly disappeared from his seat and his friends noticed him lying under the counter a moment later. Must have slipped off. They burst into laughter again – moron got so drunk he couldn't remain sitting upright. Hilarious!

"Is this a private party or can I join?" A pretty lady in an all-black kimono that revealed far more of her cleavage than it concealed sauntered down the aisle and shimmied up onto the recently freed barstool, attracting all eyes to the very interesting bouncing and stretching motions happening under the fabric.

"Drinks are on me!" Kentarou yelled out, waving his already significantly lighter purse.

"No!" Asoba protested. "On me! On me!"

"Don't argue, boys," the beautiful stranger said in a low, smoky voice. "There's enough booze to go around…"

While the band of clowns was otherwise occupied, a Dog-masked ANBU picked up Uzumaki Naruto from the ground, dusted him off and held him suspended from his collar, far enough away from his uniform to not get it needlessly dirty. He didn't want to even hazard a guess at where the kid might have been.

"Can we blow this popsicle stand?" inquired a slightly smaller ANBU, stepping out of the shadow between two booths. She – presumably – was wearing a mask depicting a Dove. "Before someone tries to test out a petard on the _chibi_."

"I've secured the primary objective," Hound replied in a monotone, and marginally lifted the kid hanging from his fist to present his evidence.

"On your six then, _taichou_ ," Dove replied. She raised her hands in a sign and vindictively hissed: " _Kai_!"

When the drunkards realised that their beautiful companion had literally vanished from their midst, they remembered they had been doing something.

By the time they turned around to search for the demon brat, he was long gone.

x

"Leggo!" the kid squeaked.

Hound summarily deposited the pipsqueak on the tatami in his own bedroom. His expression couldn't be seen beneath the mask, but it could be easily estimated. No one wanted a dirty, smelly little sewer rat tracking filth through their living space, but the only semi-viable alternatives were the ANBU Headquarters – which would basically mean leaving the kid in Ibiki's care, and after the last time the Hokage had put his foot down about it pretty definitively – and the Hokage Tower – which was empty, because the Hokage himself was busy with the festival.

This was, Hound tried very hard to convince himself, the lesser evil.

"Ouch," Naruto stated philosophically and rubbed at his throat. There wasn't even a mark there, so Hound refused to feel guilty about 'rough handling' or any such nonsense.

"You identified the perpetrator of the assault," Hound said to Dove, who was sitting on the edge of the roof with her legs crossed and chin propped up on one closed fist.

"Ya betcha," she confirmed. "The shitstain got drunk and fell off the barstool so unfortunately that he broke his neck. A tragedy."

Hound let silence spread between them for a while, and then nodded. "Good job, _Hato-kun_."

Dove snorted.

Another black-clad, masked ninja – Porcupine – landed on the railing of the balcony, regained his balance after a momentary hesitation, and coughed. "Emergency, _Inu-taichou_." He pointed to the left where in the distance curls of smoke wafted above the rooftops of Konoha buildings. "They're trying to set the Container's apartment on fire. No luck so far, but we could use your help dispersing the mob."

Hound glanced over his shoulder into the darkened bedroom. The scruffy child he had deposited there had pulled a bright orange book off the shelf and was trying hard to figure out how to open it.

"You're sure he's safe there?" Dove asked doubtfully, but with no overabundance of concern.

Hound shrugged. "Naruto-chan hasn't been taught to read yet. He just likes orange."

"Let's skedaddle, then," Dove suggested, and slid down the thin air to stand by Hound's side.

A moment later there was just the tiniest displacement of air suggesting someone had been there.

Naruto managed to open the book, but there was nothing interesting inside. No pictures, no orange, and it smelled icky. He left it lying on the floor and tried with another.

Boring.

Another one produced the same result, but he wasn't easily discouraged.

In the end he found that there was nothing interesting in any of the books or on the bookshelf, except a piece of rolled-up paper with a picture of a dog. Naruto was undecided on the point of dogs. Some were nice, friendly, a little gross with all the licking but they liked to play. Some were scary, angry, loud and wanted to bite him for no reason.

He guessed they were a lot like people, only there was a better chance to meet a nice dog than to meet a nice person. People all lied, anyway.

The dog picture didn't do anything, so Naruto left it lying on top of the discarded books and moved to search for something more interesting. There wasn't a lot interesting in the room – a couple of pillows, an empty bookcase and a dark piece of cloth slung over the back of a chair. Boring. What kind of bedroom didn't have a bed? Ooh, a desk. The desk was tall, so Naruto didn't see the top of it, but when he stood on tiptoes he could reach the tiny bottle near the edge.

His grip slipped.

The bottle fell and shattered. Some smelly dark liquid splashed out and all over the tatami.

Naruto startled and fell onto his bum. There was a crash, a whoosh, a pop, and then finally silence. He blinked.

Someone else blinked too.

Yet someone else let out a tiny, soft, questioning whine.

"Holy tailwag, puppy, did you seriously just butt-summon us?!"

Naruto looked down. He was sitting on top of the rolled up paper with the picture of a dog. It got scrunched up a bit, but not too badly, so he clambered off and patted it, trying to flatten it out. It helped a bit. Maybe.

He looked up again. The room darkened as clouds blocked out the stars outside, but Naruto had really good eyes. There were dogs. Not one, but two dogs. Little ones – little enough that Naruto could carry one of them. Puppies.

They were grey and probably soft and had big dark glinting eyes and spiky white shiny teeth. But they didn't seem to want to bite him, so they were probably the playing kind.

"Am not a puppy," Naruto protested, climbing to his feet and punching the air. "Am a Naruto."

"And you look like it, too," the first dog grumbled.

"Look like it," the other dog repeated in a girl's voice.

Naruto had never before met dogs that spoke like people. It made sense, though. How else would they lie, if they couldn't speak? Duh.

The boy-dog ran around, poked his nose into the dog-picture paper, sniffed, sneezed and said: "He did. He butt-summoned us. Wait till I tell Mum-"

" _I_ 'll tell Mum!" the girl-dog protested.

"Whatever," the boy-dog drawled. "We'll be lucky if she doesn't take it out of our fur. Didya haveta summon us right before the Presentation? I mean, I'd love to skip the circus, but I'll just have to make up for it later, anyway…"

"Yeah, didya?" repeated the girl-dog, baring her teeth menacingly.

Naruto brandished an orange book in defense. It wouldn't be much of a shield against teeth, but at least getting her nose swatted with it would hurt the dog a bit.

"Oi!" the boy-dog growled. "Simmer down, sis. He's a kid, and I betcha he's got no idea how he summoned us."

Girl-dog snarled. "He's stupid."

Naruto stomped. "I ain't stupid! Take that back!"

"You are stupid, too!" the girl-dog argued.

"You're both stupid!" barked the boy-dog, and a moment later there was a blur of two dogs fighting on top of a pile of books.

Naruto raised his bright orange shield to hide behind it and pouted. Stupid dogs.

"Enough!" another voice shouted, and Naruto flinched. It was a deep and authoritative voice, and it was angry. He crawled until he was completely hidden under the desk and hoped that whoever the angry person was, they wouldn't try to find him there. Or maybe Dog-the-ninja would come back. Then Naruto could explain how all the mess in the room was actually the dogs' fault.

"You two! What did you think you were doing?! And right before the Presentation?! Just wait until we are home-"

"But, Mum!" protested the girl.

The boy-dog yelped. "It's not my fault-"

"It's _never_ your fault!"

"But it's not! There's this kid and he-"

"No, _you_ 're not telling it right, _I_ will tell-"

"Silence!" ordered the same deep voice.

Naruto leaned forward and peered out around the table leg. There was big, huge grey dog, or maybe a wolf, and it was looming over the two puppies that had appeared earlier. Its eyes weren't red and glowing at least, so it probably wasn't a demon (but Naruto couldn't be sure, because his own eyes weren't red and glowing either, but people kept telling him he was a demon anyway). They were dark, and the dog was wearing square glasses.

Naruto stared. He had never seen a dog wearing glasses.

"Annai, keep your maw shut. Juuji, you have half a minute to explain why you're not attending your Presentation, and afterwards you can explain it to Grandfather."

The girl-dog gave a doggy scowl.

The boy-dog shuddered and hastened to speak: "We were summoned."

"If you won't take this seriously-"

"I swear on my left fang, Mum, we were summoned. The kid that's hiding under the table did it. He didn't even know what he was doing, just found a contract and pushed chakra into it, must have nicked himself on all the glass around – I don't think he can even read-"

The dog-Mum raised a paw and Juuji fell silent. She turned and squinted through her glasses in Naruto's direction.

Naruto tried to back away into the deeper shadow, but it was too late. She had already seen him.

"Come out here, child!" she commanded. She didn't sound as harsh as she did when she was scolding her dog-kids, but she still had a mouth full of very sharp teeth. Naruto definitely didn't want her to try and drag him out from under the table by biting his leg and pulling, so he toddled out and stood straight, as tall as he could.

The dog-Mum was still much taller.

"You do have a lot of chakra," dog-Mum said.

Naruto frowned. "That a good thing?"

Dog-Mum ignored him. "Very well, Juuji. This time it legitimately is not your fault. I will make your excuses to Grandfather."

Naruto could hear the boy-dog whispering: "Thank all that's canine…" and the girl-dog replying: "Thank Mum, more like."

Naruto wished he had a mum.

"And who are you, little summoner?" the dog-Mum asked, leaning down to look at Naruto eye-to-eye, so he knew she was talking to him, even though he didn't know anything about summoning.

"Am Naruto, _dattebayo_!" proclaimed Naruto. He punched the air, too, but not very much, because the dog was scary.

"Hello, Naruto-kun," she replied. "I am Kana."

"Hello, Kana," Naruto said, and thought: 'please don't bite me.'

"San," Kana said.

"Huh?"

"Call me Kana-san. Haven't your parents taught you to be polite?"

Naruto pouted. What did a dog know about being polite, anyway? For them it was all about the barking, the biting and the peeing on the lamp-posts. "Ain't got no parents."

Kana scowled. Naruto could tell, even though all the sharp teeth disappeared from sight. "Your guardians, then."

"Ain't got _none_!" Naruto repeated loudly. If she needed glasses, maybe she couldn't hear well, either.

Kana-san growled.

Naruto tried to back away, but there was a chair behind him. Drat.

"Where do you live, Naruto-kun?"

"In my 'partment," Naruto said, crossing his arms in front of his chest and pouting. He was grown-up enough to be on his own. Besides, the lying animal ninja came by all the time. He was fine. And there was always enough ramen to eat outside of the Orphanage. It was only inside he had to worry about going hungry.

Kana-san growled again, making the hair on Naruto's arms stand. "Juuji, Annai, tidy up here and return home. Naruto-kun, rub your hand on the tatami there-" her paw pointed at a big black splotch of ink, "-and press it to this paper- ah, that's it. Now, let's see about this apartment of yours…"

Juuji looked sideways at his sister and sighed. "Mum's adopting human strays… I think that's what people call _irony_."


	2. Liars Lie

Chapter Two: Liars Lie

x

Kana and Ya were lying on the rug in front of the fireplace, each with a book in front of them and reading glasses on their noses. Ya's, as opposed to Kana's, were circular. She used to tease him about them, but the truth was that he looked very hip and youthful in them even decades after she had first met him, and she never wanted him to change.

He batted away a strand of long white fur that slid down in front of his eyes and reached for his bowl of coffee.

Kana realised she hadn't read a page in an hour.

"I don't understand," Kana mused to her partner. "By human standards, he is a perfectly adequate specimen."

"Maybe they've got a bone to pick with his parents," Ya pointed out, extending a claw to turn a page of his book. "Resentment breeds like _rabbits_."

"He doesn't even know who his parents were," Kana said, staring into the flames as if hoping they would contain a clue.

"That doesn't mean that the others don't either." Ya closed his book, slid it under the armchair (that was ideal to curl up in on winter nights) and extended his paw. "Now come here, partner. It's always better to sleep on these things."

x

Naruto stared at the rabbit in front of him. It was brownish-grey, had cute, non-floppy bunny ears, big funny front teeth and a gaping wound in its neck.

It was all he could do to not start crying.

"B-b-but… K-Kana-san?"

Kana looked at him strictly. "Yes, Naruto-kun?"

Naruto wiped his eyes and nose into his sleeve. "T-t-that's food?"

Kana blinked. She blinked again and then sighed. _Humans_. "Yes, Naruto-kun. All meat you eat comes from animals."

"Even pork? No animal is pork. That would be a stupid name for an animal."

"Pork is from pig, Naruto-kun," Kana said and prayed to kami for patience. She knew Naruto was not being obnoxious on purpose, but dealing with him was very, very trying nonetheless. She had thought that a litter of two would be the worst parenting experience in her life – particularly as the combination of personalities included Annai and Chou – but Naruto was quickly proving her overly optimistic.

"W-wha?!" Naruto opened his mouth and wailed. "I didn't mean to eat piggies!"

Kana let out a whine before she could stop herself. She wished Ya was there so she could unload at least a part of this avalanche of innocent youthful ignorance on him.

But no, he was too busy being dignified in some quiet and prestigious place…

Well, he could take a break and help her out.

x

On the next day, Naruto was still stubbornly vegetarian, and Kana decided to let him work through the dilemma on his own. Humans were surprisingly inventive about explaining and rationalising away the inconveniences of ethics – effort wasted, in her opinion, since it was themselves who had set up the whole illogical ethics thing anyway.

She was preparing her materials for a reading lesson for the boy when he clattered into the apartment, lugging two plastic bags with him. He triumphantly unloaded his bounty on top of the coffee table (which he used instead of a proper kitchen table that would have been too high for him).

She came closer and nudged the boy away, examining the groceries. She had expected sweets and a lack of vegetables, but this was worse. "Naruto," she said worriedly, "most of this food isn't good."

"How come?" he explained, flailing in outrage. "I got it from the store!"

"Did you check the expiration date?"

"Huh? Is that fruit?"

"Naruto…" Kana lowered her head. Her expectations of the locals had plummeted over the past week, but apparently they still had a way to sink before they hit the true lows of the reality. She had been horrified to learn that Naruto was living on his own, but a little of that abated when she found that he had a constant ANBU guard on him. Still, she had expected that there would be someone who would help the boy with the basic things – like laundry, cooking and grocery runs. Sadly, no one came by, and Naruto had confidently gone out shopping on his own.

Kana knew that there had been human children this age who had already become full-fledged shinobi, and for whom a grocery run would be a trivial matter. However, those were genii, and while there was nothing at all deficient about Naruto, he was not anywhere near self-sufficient.

She would have to teach him to read the time. And the calendar. Because, looking at him, he might have the concept of changing seasons (cold is a good teacher for that), but otherwise one day seemed just like another. Morning differed from evening depending on where the sun was in the sky, the hot midday was for naps. Even Kana's hope that Naruto understood that night was for sleeping had been dashed.

Night was the time the streets became empty and Naruto could go out and explore. Sometimes to forage, too, apparently – there was no other explanation for some pieces in his closet than that they had been rescued from a heap of refuse.

"I can't help it, Kana-san!" Naruto whined, shame-faced but unwilling to show humbleness and ask for advice. Not, Kana suspected, because he was that arrogant, but rather because he had never been showed how to.

And that, she decided, was why he needed to see how a pup (or a human child, there wasn't enough difference there to wag a tail at) should properly behave.

Although she was leery, she would bring Annai with her next time.

"Well, Naruto-kun," she said, shelving her resolution for the time being, since the issue of buying good food was a tad more pressing presently, "I thought you said you could smell the ANBU that followed you around. Did you make that up?"

"No!" the boy yelled, jumping to his feet and clenching his fists (the knuckles on the right one were scraped and the blood crusted, and Kana mentally added basic first aid to the list of life skills she would have to teach to him). "I ain't a liar! I can smell them! Honest, I can!"

"Your nose is that good, Naruto-kun…?" Kana faux-inquired.

"Yeah!" Pride replaced indignation on the boy's face as fast as one could blink. "My nose is awesome!"

Kana hunched her shoulders and leaned down, so that her nose almost touched Naruto's. "Then why don't you use it?"

x

Naruto took to foraging like… well, like ducks took to water, Kana supposed. He liked mushrooms and refused to be discouraged from the non-edible ones.

He learnt better after two mild cases of poisoning. Nothing dangerous – she didn't want him to be hurt – but she let him puke his guts out a few times, and afterwards the lesson seemed to have stuck.

He discovered fruits and herbs; strangely, for a human, he distinguished plants better by smell than by sight. He remained stubborn on the point of root vegetable, but Kana decided to cut her losses on that point, and resolved to wait until he was older and less… short-sighted. She held hope, anyway.

"What's this?" Naruto asked on one balmy afternoon.

Annai left off hunting the red and brown butterfly and bounded over to them to look at what Naruto had discovered.

"It's a marshmallow, Naruto-kun," Kana replied, and then, quickly added: "Don't eat it! It's been there who knows how long-"

"But I eat plants off the ground all the time," the boy protested, with logic that was almost acceptable. "Worse, you want me to eat veggies, and those get pulled straight out of the dirt."

"Ew," Annai opined. "Smells weird. And it's all sticky."

"The ants have gotten to it," Kana pointed out. "And it's not good for you, anyway. It makes your teeth rot."

Annai whined at the idea of her teeth rotting, and ran off to find another interesting insect to follow around. If there was anything she had in common with her twin, it was the love of butterflies. Irrational, Kana mused, since a butterfly tasted pretty much like powdered paper tissue with a crunchy bit in the middle (no comment as to how she knew that), but there it was.

Naruto was pouting at the white and blue congealing mass in his hand.

Kana jumped up onto a tree stump and looked over the edge of the training ground. Her eyes weren't much good, but she easily detected the tang of steel among the all-pervading scent of stale, dried blood.

"Let's have a treasure hunt," she said to both the kids. "Kunai, shuriken and senbon, all the way from the creek to the edge of the town. Whoever finds most, wins."

"I'll win!" Annai exclaimed, and off she was without waiting for a response.

Naruto abandoned the disgusting marshmallow and looked around himself.

Kana pulled a senbon out of the side of the stump. It was a little rusty, but it served well to show the boy that she was already in the lead.

Naruto dove into the underbrush.

Half an hour later, they had put together a meagre pile of used weaponry. It was just enough to start Naruto off – perhaps that would make him feel better, after he had soundly lost the contest.

"I won! I won!" Annai jumped around happily.

Naruto pouted more intensely.

"Naruto-kun?" Kana said quietly, watching her daughter prance around like some kind of a happy juvenile herbivore.

"Yeah, Kana-san?"

"If your nose is that good, why don't you remember to use it?" she asked, poking at a salvaged spool of useable ninja wire.

Naruto remained quiet for a while, and then muttered: "I will. I promise… ' _ttebayo_."

x

Naruto's next shopping trip ended up worse.

Kana almost couldn't believe it at first, and then she became so angry that she forgot how to speak human for a minute or two. She licked Naruto's face, tasting salt, and sniffed at his bruises. She let him hug her even though he pulled her fur.

She seriously plotted murder as he fell asleep, hungry but too upset to eat.

She hunted a deer that night, pulled it down all by herself, and went home covered in its still warm blood. Ya refused to touch her until she had washed off the stickiness, and even then she smelled so bad that he went to sleep outside.

In the morning, she deposited a hunk of venison in Naruto's fridge and woke him up with a none-too-gentle bite to his ankle.

"I'm up!" Naruto complained, and went to the bathroom to pee and wash his face.

Kana waited for him to come back. She bared her teeth at him and then was frustrated when he refused to be intimidated. "Why would you let him hurt you?!"

"Let him?!" Naruto yelled right back. "I didn't let him! He came out of nowhere!"

Kana already knew that, because the boy had an ANBU guard when he was in public, and those ninja didn't joke around. They weren't officially allowed to kill a civilian in retaliation, but they were crafty, and they had their little ways around their orders. Coming out of nowhere was the only way a civilian could actually hurt her adoptive pup.

But her pup shouldn't have been surprised.

"Why didn't you smell him coming?!" she demanded, and came to the conclusion that the one ripped throat last night had not nearly sated her bloodlust.

"I don't know…" Naruto flopped down onto his butt and crossed his arms.

"Use your nose!" Kana insisted for the umpteenth time. He had such a great sense of smell, far outstripping his peers, but it was worthless if he didn't use it.

"I use it!"

Obviously he didn't, Kana thought, observing the greenish fingerprints on his skin that were, fortunately, already mostly healed. "I want you to do two things for your training, Naruto-kun. Remember that everyone lies… and use your nose to find out as much of the truth as you can."

x

Ya was the nicest dog Naruto had ever met. Unless you made him angry – then he was the scariest dog Naruto had ever met.

They met for the first time in the late afternoon on a sunny, warm day.

Naruto was crouching at the base of a signpost, mostly hidden from sight by a decorative bush of roses that had been planted in a row along the street to – old man Hokage claimed – discourage people from walking across the lawn, but which Naruto suspected was there to provide a life lesson for the kids playing in the park. Watch out for the thorns, kids.

Incidentally, Naruto had learnt that lesson quickly and taken it to heart.

The other kids didn't even come near the rose bushes. They ran around, yelling and squealing, playing all sorts of games that really didn't look like fun at all – they really didn't, Naruto thought, and maybe pouted a little – and others climbed over the jungle gym and the monkey bars and the net climbers. There were swings and slides and rope ladders, chin-up bars, see-saws and balancing beams – basically anything that kids could use to play and at the same time practice for future ninja careers.

Naruto loved that jungle gym – it was yellow, but yellow was in fact a very shy orange, he was sure – and he spent hours and hours playing there.

At night. When there was no one else around.

Naruto was a stubborn person, but there were only so many times angry parents could chase him away before it got through his thick skull that he wasn't allowed to play here during the day.

"Wuff," opined a dog.

Naruto jumped, and by sheer luck mostly avoided rose thorns. He pressed himself against the wall behind him – it was grimy and icky, but at least it didn't bite – and sniffed.

The dog smelled… well, friendly, yes, but not very much like a dog. Or not _only_ like a dog. It was definitely a dog, but no normal dog smelled like coffee and paper and ink. And… and Kana-san…?

"H-hi?" Naruto suggested in a voice so high that he sounded like a girl.

"Hello, Naruto-kun," replied the dog, and sat down on his haunches. He still pretty much loomed over the crouching Naruto, all tall and wide, strong like a ninja, with a mouth full of sharp teeth and eyes mostly shielded by overlong whitish fur.

Naruto gulped.

"You don't want to join them?" the dog inquired, glancing over at the playground, where the littlest Uchiha was shoved into the dust by an older blonde girl, who laughed at him, and then ran away, scared by Uchiha's big brother. She disappeared among other girls, and the whole nattering and giggling group moved over to the rigmarole.

Naruto shrugged. "Not like it matters. Am not allowed."

The big dog thought about that for a while, and then nodded. He glanced sideways at Naruto. "Want me to bite them?"

"No!" Naruto shouted, jumping to his feet and waving his arms. "You can't just bite people! It hurts! Besides, then adults come and you get punished…" Naruto tugged at his shirt and bit his lip. Biting was never worth it. And… yeah, it did actually hurt.

The dog harrumphed and stretched to the sound of popping joints. He must have been _old_.

"You're not a dog, right?" Naruto asked. Then he scowled, because the dog was giving him a doggie grin. "Ugh! You're a dog. Obviously! But not… not a normal dog. You're like Kana-san. A _summoning_ dog."

"A _ninken_ ," the dog corrected him, and nodded.

"Nin-ken," Naruto repeated carefully. It made sense. He could probably remember that.

"I've got a box of dango," the dog said then, and that _didn't make_ any sense, because where would a dog keep a box of dango anyway, but then he did actually push the box forward with his paw.

Naruto opened it, because he had thumbs, and thumbs made a lot of things easier. He had learnt that from Kana-san. Mostly, thumbs were needed for ramen. And ramen was the best thing ever, so Naruto thanked the kami for his thumbs every time he remembered to.

"Can you eat this?" Naruto inquired.

The dog eyeballed him from where he was deftly devouring dumpling after dumpling, holding the stick between his paws. Ninja dogs, huh.

Naruto waved his hands. "Yeah, obviously you can! But – is that not bad for you?"

The dog slurped down the last dumpling and, quick as lightning, threw the stick in the direction of the playground. It hit the practice kunai a boy was holding up to try and stab his friend, and shoved it out of his grip.

"Wow…" Naruto breathed. Open-mouthed, he turned to stare at the dog.

The dog huffed and took another stick out of the box, long pink tongue licking at the first dumpling. "You can call me Ya, Naruto-kun."

For the first time ever, Naruto felt like he was the lucky one. He didn't need playgrounds, and he didn't need to play with the other kids – he still had the most fun _and_ the best friends he could wish for.

Two weeks later, Ya-san found Naruto lurking behind the same rose bush again, watching the kids cheering and screaming and whining in turns. Ya-san sat underneath the signpost, munching on a piece of smoked salmon, which smelled so good it made Naruto's mouth water.

"Reprehensible," Ya-san muttered, and chewed the last bit of his morsel.

Naruto wasn't entirely sure what the word meant, but it was definitely something bad. Ya-san was watching a group of boys and girls, probably from a ninja clan going by their hair and clothes. They stood around a pair of smaller girls – one blonde, one pink-haired – and Naruto had never before seen anyone with pink hair, that was _so_ weird – and even from distance it was obvious that the older kids were being mean.

So far it seemed like they were just saying stuff, and the blonde girl was getting mad… but the pink-haired one started crying.

Nobody did anything.

Scowling, Naruto stomped out of his hidey hole. He ignored Ya-san, tried not to think about what Kana-san would say, and crossed the grass to the swingset.

"-and maybe your mummy told you that your clan poos gold, but that still doesn't mean the swings belong to you!" finished the little blonde girl, putting one hand on her hip in a pose that looked way too adult for her.

"Ne… it's… okay, Ino-chan," said the pink-haired girl.

"Hear that?!" mocked one of the elder kids. " _It's okay, Ino-chan_."

"Run off, scared little civilian crybaby!" jeered a boy with a nose like a pig's snout.

Naruto puffed up his cheeks.

"Shoo! Run off to your mummy!" hissed a tall, skinny girl with scraped knees. She raised her hand.

Naruto barreled into her stomach head-first, and they both fell over in a tangle. He didn't like hitting a girl, but they shouldn't have bullied the two littler ones. He oofed as air rushed out of him, and then someone kicked him. Someone else yelled. He was hit again and again, and he rolled to his feet and madly swung his fists around.

He didn't manage to hit much, but one of the older boys staggered away, bawling.

Naruto got hurt worse. His mouth was bloody, and there would be lumps on his head later on. His knuckled were scraped, and there were bruises all over his body. Still, _he_ knew that there was no point in crying.

"Grrrawr!" bellowed a deep voice, and the kids ran away, leaving Naruto lying in the dust.

"Are you… alive?" asked the little blonde girl, squatting next to him and suspiciously prodding him with one finger.

"Ugh…" Naruto grumbled.

"He's alive," the girl said, and moved away. "Stupid."

"H-he was… v-very b-brave, Ino-chan," replied the pink-haired girl.

"Stupid," Ya-san grumbled quietly, crouching to sniff at Naruto's face.

"Would you like a lolly?" the pink-haired girl asked, stretching out her hand with the sweet, but then suddenly the sunlight disappeared.

Naruto squinted up and found a lot of narrow-eyed, hate-filled faces peering down at him from great height. There were the adults, finally. They would take care of the girls, he was sure, but he was also scared. He knew adults didn't like him. They might not hurt him, but they would definitely say that it was all his fault.

"Get away from my daughter!" a woman yelled. Some people grabbed the girls and pretty much dragged them away.

Others closed in on Naruto, and he was ready to try and run away, or at least to curl up and hope that things wouldn't get too bad, when Ya-san growled.

He growled again, low and frightening, taking slow, small steps forward, until he was looming over Naruto, glaring at the crowd. He didn't roar, like Naruto sort of expected him to, but he didn't need to. There was something in the air around him, not really a smell, but something that carried that scariness in it.

Naruto's hair stood on ends, and there was a weird swooping feeling in his belly, like he was falling off of a tree branch, but not hitting the ground for a long time.

The adults got very, very pale in their faces, and a blink of an eye later they all hurried away.

Naruto was only a little confused – he could smell that they all disliked him and were scared of Ya-san, so running away made sense. Above all that, however, he smelled anger from the dog standing over him. It was a little scary even for him, and he knew for a fact that Kana-san would protect him.

"Don't be mad, Ya-san," Naruto said, climbed to his feet, and chanced patting the dog's back. "They're just…" He searched for the correct word. Scared fit, in a way, but that wasn't all. They weren't just scared. They were scared-angry-hurt-sad-brave-caring when they shooed their kids away from Naruto. He used to think that they were stupid, or mean, but the nose never lied.

"They're just _what_?" Ya-san demanded. He, too, was angry-sad-caring.

Naruto grinned so hard it made him squint. "They're _people_."

In his head, that explained everything.

x

" _Inu-san_ …" the Hokage grumbled around the pipe stuck between his teeth. Then he sighed and flattened the report on top of his desk.

The ANBU Captain in front of him didn't so much as shiver, seemingly concentrating on something far behind the wall.

The Hokage suppressed a second sigh, rubbed his eye, and then balefully glared at his ninja. One of the most loyal and trustworthy ones, certainly, but on some days he was more trouble than he was worth. At the moment, the Hokage was sure, Hound was using his Sharingan-memory to read porn without having to bring out the book.

There was spunk and eccentricity, and then there was blatant rudeness.

He wished he had a threat that worked, but even D-ranks had lost their effect on this man.

"Report, _Inu-san_ ," the Hokage ordered.

"Naruto-chan witnessed some bullying and went rushing in to protect the victims." The man shrugged. "Admittedly, he did throw the first punch."

The Hokage nodded. "That does merit punishment, and it would appease the many _concerned citizens_ -" he glowered at the report, "-but then, I would hate to dissuade Naruto-kun from the idea of standing up for the weak and defenceless."

The ANBU snorted.

"Nothing in the ninja code calls for absence of conscience," the old man chided gently. "Rather, conscience in shinobi may be the difference between genocide and prosperity."

Hound shrugged. "Uzumaki. No amount of discipline teaches any of them anything but how to get around the authority next time."

The Hokage blinked and took a deep, careful breath. "Right. Right you are, _Inu-san_. It would be better to keep Naruto… shall we say… willing to listen to me. Perhaps this time it would be simpler to waive any punishment."

Hound inclined his head and took his leave.

The Hokage exhaled a cloud of smoke. "Let us hope he has inherited Minato-kun's sense of morality."

x

Naruto finished his ramen and watched the last noodle coil on the bottom of the bowl. He felt sad and happy at the same time.

He hadn't known that was possible. Obviously it was, though, because right now he was very, very sad that the pig had died, but also very, very happy with his belly full of warm, tasty ramen. It wasn't fair that something had to die for ramen, but in a way it made sense. Everything great had a sacrifice behind it. He promised himself that from now on he would be even more grateful for ramen, and that he would always respect it, to pay respect to the sacrifice of the animals that died for it.

"It didn't smell like piggies," he said after it was all eaten.

Kana-san sighed into her paws and closed her eyes.

Ya-san nudged her with his nose.

"Everyone lies." Naruto put his chopsticks down and rubbed the back of his neck. He didn't yet know what Kana-san and Ya-san lied about, but he didn't doubt that they did. They were his friends, and teachers, and he really liked them, but he wasn't stupid. Not anymore. "It's true. Like the masked ninja. Dove smells like snakes, Hippo like turtles and Zebra like flowers – the ugly pink and violet kind. Only Dog smells like dogs."

"You're right, Naruto-chan. Everyone lies," Ya agreed, and then continued strictly: "But so do you."

Naruto scowled. "But when I tell the truth, people get mad! And then they try to hurt me, sometimes." Like they did at the playground, and at the Festival, and before that at the Orphanage.

"Exactly." Ya smiled a little. "We all lie to protect ourselves, and that's fine. But if someone lies to hurt someone else – that is what you have to watch out for."

"Trust your nose, Naruto-chan," Kana finished, and they both looked at Naruto over the top of their glasses, completely synchronised. It was cool, but it also made Naruto shiver.

"I will," he promised.


	3. A Game of Chicken

Chapter Three: A Game of Chicken

x

"C'mon, chibi," said Dove, poking Naruto's stomach with a finger. "You don't want to be late on your first day."

"You didn't tell me where we're going." Naruto pouted adorably. Dove wasn't the type to get misty-eyed over cute kids, but she had a special soft spot for this one. Well, not a traditionally soft spot, but she felt a stronger than usual urge to kill people whenever someone threatened or mistreated this boy.

If anyone outside the team knew, she would never have heard the end of it, but Hound, Lynx and Newt were all similarly afflicted, so they kept their mouths shut due to the case of mutually assured destruction.

"Why don't you guess?" Dove suggested. "As long as you do it on the way."

"On the way _where_?!" Naruto demanded, but he did it while putting on his sandals, so Dove only smirked under her mask.

"To the Academy, of course," she said faux-flippantly, and then regretted that she didn't have a camera on her, because the look on the boy's face was priceless.

He gaped at her, open-mouthed. "The _Shinobi_ Academy?"

Dove shrugged. "Haven't heard of any other Academies around. Are you coming or should I tell the Hokage that you won't-"

"I'm coming! I'm coming!" Naruto suddenly became a whirlwind of a little kid in brownish, off-grey rags, and it was all Dove could do to keep up with him. "C'mon, _Hato-san_! Whatcha waitin' for?"

Dove laughed and followed him outside into the morning light. The streets were mostly deserted, and he was free to skip ahead, forgetting all about mundane things like money or textbooks. It was fun to watch him get overwhelmed with enthusiasm – she only dimly remembered her first day at the Academy. What she did remember starkly was the large crowd of proud family members, none of whom had been there for her.

The least she could do was walk him up to the gates.

Afterwards, Dove joined her commander on top of a nearby roof. He was watching the kids' parents notice Uzumaki's presence and lean down to their progeny to speak in quiet voices.

She could imagine what they were saying. She was pretty used to hearing similar things about herself.

But the _chibi_ would tough it out.

"I'm gonna miss the little turd," she admitted.

"He's old enough to look after himself," Hound replied, because he was socially maladjusted and when he had been six, he had actually made chuunin. It skewed his perception of normal. "If anything happens, the patrol will catch it."

Dove took a last glance at the building filled with pipsqueaks, and maybe hoped that Naruto would set it on fire or something. It would serve the arseholes right.

x

Naruto couldn't believe his luck. The Shinobi Academy!

It was every bit as exciting as he had imagined it. There were tall ceilings, and classrooms, and charts with all sorts of weapons, and a blackboard. And there were other kids, and none of them glared at him.

Probably none of them recognised him, but that was a good thing. They could get to know him for real! The real him, not the demon brat all adults complained about.

"Good morning, students!" said an old woman in a loud voice. "My name is Utatane Suzuran, and you will call me Suzuran-sensei."

Naruto looked around for clues on whether he was supposed to say or do something, but mostly the other children were just as awkward and uncertain, so he just grinned and clutched the fabric of his trousers, keeping in mind that he shouldn't interrupt the teacher. Kana-san was specific about that.

Teachers were to be respected.

Naruto's determination to be a good pupil lasted until the recess.

Granted permission to move about the classroom, talk among themselves and eat their lunches, the boys and girls transformed into the crowd Naruto was used to observing on the playground. They were loud, and formed small groups and still managed to naturally leave him out.

His stomach growled, grumpy about missing breakfast. Naruto didn't have a packed lunch, but he supposed that he could go a few more hours before the hunger became really pressing.

Only… only there was food everywhere around, and it smelled _so_ good. He followed the scent of marshmallows, and found himself looking at a pair of girls that seemed familiar. It took a while for him to recognise them, but then the first one leaned back and he could see the second one clearly, and she had pink hair.

They were the two that had been bullied at the playground.

The blonde smelled like shampoo and flowers and asparagus. The pink-haired one… she smelled like pancakes. Naruto had had pancakes once, on his birthday, when the Hokage had taken him to a house and let him met a pretty lady he said was his daughter-in-law. Ever since then, Naruto felt sad-happy when he scented pancakes. They weren't ramen, but they smelled like good memories.

"Hey!" the girl screeched, and pushed him off the seat, onto the floor.

"Leave Sakura-chan alone, moron!" ordered the blonde, and pulled out a shuriken that wasn't meant for practice. It was sharp.

Naruto tracked the glint with his eyes, and before the teacher snagged him by the back of his shirt, he took a deep sniff.

Ino-chan was the blonde. Sakura-chan was the pink-haired one. They were friends, and liked each other. They didn't like him.

It hurt inside his chest when Suzuran-sensei made him stand in the corner facing the wall. Naruto closed his eyes and tried to listen to the voices behind him. Still, he already knew that no one was going to say anything nice about him. After today, no one was going to want to be his friend.

When the kids were let go at the end of the day, they all walked past Naruto. He heard Ino-chan promising her friend that they were going to practice together, so that they would be the best two kunoichi of the year, and then Sakura-chan thanked her as she crossed the threshold, smelling like pancakes and lollypops and toffee, and Naruto swallowed, bitter.

He remained left behind, standing in that corner, when Suzuran-sensei shuffled up behind him (with a waft of weapon polish and menthol ointment and plums) and said: "You may go, too, Uzumaki. Don't fight in class again."

Naruto protested: "I wasn't fighting! I just wanted to make friends – I got pushed!"

The old hag turned away from him and ignored him.

Naruto swallowed again. One day, he would figure out why people hated him. And then he would prove that they were all stupid, and then they would respect him!

On that – much happier – note, he went home.

x

Kana wished she could have felt like every other parent expecting their child back from their first day of school, only she couldn't seem to squash her worry. Ya had tried to reassure her, but it would have worked so much better if he had believed a word of what he was saying.

This situation had a terrible potential for disaster.

There was some small chance that Naruto would come back his exuberant self, excited about new ways of training, perhaps gabbing on about some new friend he had made… but Kana wasn't that much of an optimist.

She wished she would have been surprised when the boy trudged in with a downward twist to his lips. Sadly enough, she felt relieved that there were no tears and no rage.

"Why the long face, Naruto-chan?" Ya asked, closing the book he had been reading and moving in closer to scent the human pup.

Naruto laid down his armful of books and scrolls, and sat down onto the carpet in between Kana and Ya.

"Sakura," he admitted after a short while, pouting for all he was worth. "She's so pretty, and she smells sooo nice, but she hates me."

Ya nudged the boy's shoulder with the edge of his jaw and earned a tiny but honest grin. "I'm sorry, Naruto. Sometimes people just hate you for no good reason, and there's nothing you can do about it."

Kana doubted such a thing had ever happened to her partner, but unfairness was something that just went around and sooner or later everybody would be subjected to it. Granted, Naruto was a bit of a special case, but she liked to think that the Pack's care made up for a lot of the humans' deficiencies.

"I know," Naruto agreed sagely, in this one aspect wise far beyond his years. "Happens to me all the time."

There was a growl.

Kana knew the entire gamut of Ya's growls, and she knew she hadn't let out a sound, so it had to have been Naruto. Odd. He wasn't usually prone to such canineness…

There it was again, a low, rumbling sound coming from… Naruto's belly?

Kana met Ya's eye.

There was something about a hungry child that activated parental instincts even across species – and Kana's eyes narrowed in pleasure when Ya quietly rose to all four and slunk to the kitchen to put together something for Naruto to eat.

Just like years ago, Ya made her fall for him all over again.

x

"My classmate Kirimi smells sooo tasty," Naruto breathed over his cooling cup of chicken ramen. "I think her dad is probably a butcher."

"I take it you're over your vegetarianism?" Kana-san inquired, amused and approving.

Naruto scowled and stabbed the noodles in his cup with the tips of his chopsticks. "I hate that anyone kills cute animals just for food." Then he heaved a very heavy sigh. "But they're already dead, right? It's not like I can save their lives through not eating their meat… right?"

Kana nodded, deciding to not point out the huge, gaping hole in Naruto's logic, because she honestly doubted she had the patience to coach him toward a balanced diet if he hadn't relented on this point. She was relieved, and absolutely unwilling to cause further problems for herself through unnecessary honesty.

"What about your teachers?"

"I've met two, so far. There's old hag Suzuran and Mizuki-sensei. Old hag has bad eyes. She needs glasses, but doesn't wear them, and then she can't tell people apart. A lot. She has a bunch of weapons under her old-hag coat, and stinks of polishing oil. And moths. She's also sick – very sick. She'll probably die in a year or so."

" _Suzuran-sensei_ , Naruto-kun, not 'old hag'," Kana corrected him.

"Yeah, yeah. " Naruto waved the admonishment away, biting his lip in concentration. "Mizuki- _sensei_ is weird. He's got a girlfriend, and she's a healer or a nurse or something, 'cause I know what disinfection stinks like." Naruto doubted he would ever forget that smell, after he had once had a full pail of the stinky liquid upturned on him. It burnt. He couldn't see anything for two days afterwards. "He prolly has some kind of bird summon, and spends a lot of time in the forest…"

Kana hummed and nodded in acceptance of Naruto's efforts. He punched the air.

Then he noticed that Ya-san was looking at him suspiciously, teeth absently working on the bone sticking out of his maw.

"Wha?!" Naruto demanded, scowling. He'd done good, hadn't he?

"And?" Ya-san asked coolly.

Kana looked side-ways at him, and then narrowed her eyes at Naruto.

Naruto pouted, trying to keep the scowl in place at the same time. "And wha?!"

"Your Mizuki-sensei. Report, Naruto."

Naruto kept pouting for a moment longer. Then, realising that he had no chance to avoid answering, he hung his head and muttered: "He hates me."

"Ah," Ya replied easily.

Kana let out a quiet growl, but Naruto was by now familiar with the reaction of those adults who pitied him but decided to accept things with resignation rather than attempt to help.

He bit the inside of his cheek. That wasn't fair. Kana was a friend – the first friend he had ever made – and she was helping. She was helping a lot. Besides, what could she do about a pooface Academy teacher? Nothing.

"He pretends like he doesn't, but he does," Naruto expanded after a while of silence. "He acts all friendly and stuff, but the nose doesn't lie. Heh, at least I can trust my nose. Apparently, everyone else is a liar."

x

Naruto's first few weeks of attending the Academy had been tough. _Fraught_ , Ya-san had called them within Kana-san's earshot. _Sucking feline arse_ , he might have muttered once safely out of her presence.

They were all glad that the getting-used-to-it part was over. Naruto was secretly sad and maybe a little bit relieved that it had gone about as well as he had expected it to go. He had hoped for better, of course, but he wasn't stupid, and expecting people – even small people of his age – to be nice to him was stretching the limits of wishful stupidity.

People mostly ignored him completely after that thing with the Uchiha happened, and that smiley boy with the fan on his shirt got pulled out of the class for a few days. He came back, only it wasn't him anymore. It was some weird silent, scowling body-double that smelled different and talked different but still wore the little fan on his clothes. Whatever. The new Uchiha didn't like Naruto any more or less than the old Uchiha, so it didn't really matter.

Naruto woke up on one Sunday, achy after a day of running around – _training!_ – with Juuji and Annai, and stumbled into his kitchen – which maybe doubled as sitting room – still rubbing sleep out of his eyes. He dreamt of dogs often, ever since his life was filled with them, but they were usually the _ninken_ he knew, so he didn't try to write off what he was seeing as a dream.

Kana-san was sipping white coffee out of a chipped cup, and there was a pug perched primly on a cushion opposite her, thoughtfully considering his own cup of coffee. When Naruto came in, the stranger moved his thoughtful consideration from his drink to Naruto himself.

"Pakkun," Kana-san said promptly, "this is Uzumaki Naruto, our newest addition."

Her sharp stare worked just as well as a swat of a paw to the back of his knee (Naruto knew about tendons and how important they were for a ninja).

"Hello, Pakkun-san," he said as politely as he could, looking to Kana-san for approval or directions.

"Hello, Naruto-chan," Pakkun replied in a friendly manner, drawing Naruto's attention back to himself.

Naruto was given one of those scrutinies that reminded him of the animal-masked ninja – not hateful, but stern and mildly disapproving, as if they half-expected him to fail whatever test they were supposed to put him through.

Naruto failed at the Academy often, but there he at least got his test with all the corrections made in red, so he knew where he had screwed up and what he needed to improve.

After a while that felt unending, Pakkun nodded and turned to Kana-san. "He will need a _ninken_ partner for the start. Your children are very good companions for playing and training – you and Ya can see to his education – but Naruto-chan _will_ be a ninja, so he will need a partner for battle."

Naruto opened his mouth, but before he could put his foot in it he closed it again.

He could hardly believe it – too much optimism only led to pain – but he wanted to. He imagined how great, how _awesome_ it would be to have a dog partner with him every time he needed a little back-up.

A dog that would be big enough to frighten off the stupid civilians when they tried to hurt Naruto, but gentle, so that Naruto would feel safe in their presence and could fall asleep cuddled up to their fur. Someone that wouldn't mind listening when Naruto got into one of his talky moods, but who would be a kickass fighter at the same time, _'ttebayo_!

"As I expected," Kana-san replied sorrowfully, bringing Naruto right back down to earth after his quick trip to dreamland. "I hoped you might know someone."

Naruto's enthusiasm fizzled out. If even Kana-san didn't know anyone who would have wanted to partner him, the search was as good as lost.

Pakkun realised it too, because he lowered his nose almost to the level of the coffee in his cup and admitted: "…tough bone, Kana. An experienced _ninken_ ; someone who will complement Naruto-chan and yet at the same time genuinely like him… there aren't many like that."

Naruto knew what that meant. It was resignation dressed up in pretty words to make it seem like it hurt less.

But why then did Pakkun appear to be still thinking? Why hadn't he given up on the 'lost cause' already?

"Naruto-chan will be on his best behaviour," Kana said in a tone that added 'or else'. Naruto was learning to understand, love and fear that tone.

"No such thing between partners," Pakkun refuted, shaking his head. "Trust is more important, or you both end up dead. Hmm… I may have an idea. Scrounge up some chicken, preferably grilled, but any kind except spicy is good."

Then he returned to the other dimension, where all the _ninken_ lived.

Naruto jumped to his feet. "Chicken!"

"Naruto, wait-"

But he was already out the door and running down the stairs. Only he forgot that Kana-san was a ninja, so when he reached the ground floor she was there in front of the building, waiting for him with a strict frown.

"C'mon, Kana-san!" Naruto whined. He had to get that chicken. He wasn't going to mess up his one chance for a dog partner that wouldn't hate him.

Kana bared her teeth. "And how do you intend to obtain the chicken, Naruto-chan? Will you steal it?"

"I will buy it, _'ttebayo_!" Naruto proclaimed, punching the air.

Only, he probably wouldn't, because he wasn't allowed inside restaurants and the street vendors hated him, except for old man Ichiraku, who only sold ramen and soup.

"With what money?" Kana-san inquired.

Naruto patted his pockets, and found that he didn't have any pockets, because he was still dressed in his pyjamas and barefoot, and his frog wallet was hidden under a floorboard in the corner of the kitchen where no one ever looked and wouldn't take it from him.

"Then I will steal some," he grumbled, but he knew that should probably get back up and change his clothes, and find some sandals because the streets were treacherous and sometimes there was broken glass or rusty nails. He didn't even need Kana-san growling at him to realise that much.

He was going to try and buy chicken, but if the shopkeepers got mad at him and wouldn't sell it to him he would steal some, and he wouldn't let Kana-san make him feel guilty about it, because this was too important.

With a gigantic dog walking a step behind him and frightening people, nobody gave Naruto much attention. The vendor's eyes jumped between his grill and Kana-san as if he was scared that she would leap up and eat all of his wares – and Kana-san pretended like she was considering it, almost like a prank – and the guy didn't even glance Naruto's way while he collected his money and handed over a paper bag full of heavenly-smelling meat.

The only thing that stopped Naruto from delving into the bag and stuffing his mouth with the deliciousness was that he absolutely had to make the best first impression on his future partner.

He wondered if his future partner would share.

"Oh," Kana-san said quietly when they arrived at the apartment.

Too overwhelmed with the mouthwatering scent of chicken, Naruto only now smelled someone nearby. None of them were human, but they were inside his apartment, and he reached for a kunai.

Kana-san patted his knee with her paw. "Go in, Naruto-chan. No worries – everyone here is Pack."

The front door was locked as they had left it, and the living room untouched. Naruto strained his ears to hear quiet talking, or at least breathing, but Pakkun-san was a skilled shinobi. It seemed like the stranger was also good at ninja skills.

Naruto's heart skipped a beat and he hesitated at the threshold to the kitchen, kunai in one hand, paper bag with grilled meat in the other.

"Come in, pup," Pakkun-san ordered.

A floorboard creaked as someone put weight on it, and then another, footsteps coming closer, and suddenly there was someone there, right in front of Naruto.

Naruto gaped at the new dog with his mouth open.

The dog was almost as big as Kana, a good head taller than Naruto, but walked with a stoop, so Naruto could see his face. His left eye was all milky, and there were patches of fur missing down his left side, pale scars running this way and that. Naruto stepped forwards and extended his hand-

The dog leaned away and bared his teeth.

Naruto froze. He finally closed his mouth, and squatted down to make himself look smaller, and only then remembered to put away the kunai. He had forgotten! Stupid!

He cringed. There was no way he would hurt that dog! He wanted to pet him, though. He did that with Juuji and Annai, and even Kana-san let him stroke her fur if he was respectful about it, but this was the first time he wanted to touch a dog to make their pain go away.

"Can I?" he asked.

The dog turned his head and looked at Naruto through his only working eye. After a while, he nodded.

Naruto wanted to jump up and hug him, but he didn't want him to move away again, so he forced himself to go slower. He patted the dog's head between his ears, then stroked down his spine for a bit, feeling too much of the bones there. The dog snuffled. Naruto couldn't stop himself anymore; he put his arms around the dog's neck and squeezed, but gently. He really didn't want to hurt him.

The dog sighed and turned his head again. "Alright."

His voice had a bit of a growl in it, a low rumble that almost tickled. Naruto liked it. It made him want to giggle.

Pakkun pointed out: "Naruto-chan is a little unusual for a summoner-"

"You don't say," the dog deadpanned. He nudged Naruto with his paw and made him get off. "As you knew when you called me." He looked Naruto in the face. "I am Rikku, Naruto."

"Hi, Rikku-san!" Naruto yelped, and then felt completely out of his depth, because he was supposed to say something, he knew he was, Kana-san had taught him, but he could not remember anything in the face of Rikku's awesomeness.

"Just… Rikku, Naruto." He inclined his head thoughtfully. "Say, Naruto… would you… share that chicken?"

Naruto nodded, tears of happiness running down his face. "I'll even share my ramen!"

Somewhere out of his sight, Kana-san and Pakkun-san burst into doggy laughter.


	4. Can't Catch Me

Chapter Four: Can't Catch Me

x

"…and then we had to learn the third kata, only I think I am doing something wrong in the second one, and Mizuki-sensei won't tell me what, he just says that I'm doing good, and that's great, but I wanna do better than good, I wanna do it right..." Naruto took a deep breath and continued: "…but Mizuki-sensei made me do the third kata and I keep falling on my knee, and I'd show you the bruise but it's already healed-"

Rikku walked toward the brook, listening to his 'partner' with barely half an ear and keeping the rest of his attention on the village around them. It had taken him exactly three and half minutes on the first outing to discover that, when it came to Naruto, Konoha was hostile environment.

"-and that happens all the time, so no one ever believes me when I say that someo- I mean, that I hurt myself, because other people don't heal so fast, or they say they don't, I'm not sure, Rikku-san, do dogs heal faster than people?"

Rikku had known that Pakkun wouldn't have tried to talk him into coming back without a reason, but even so he was surprised. As a matter of fact, during his first few days of acquaintance with Uzumaki Naruto, he had been in an almost constant state of surprise.

He was surprised now – by the sudden silence. He went back over the tail end of the puppy's monologue and said: "No."

Naruto frowned at Rikku's scars, then grinned widely, and off went his mouth again: "I wish I knew why I heal fast. It's great that I heal, because sometimes the villa- sometimes I get hurt real bad, and then I don't have to stay at the hospital. I don't like the hospital-"

Pakkun was a bitch – no offence meant to any female canine, but he really was – and he knew that Rikku wouldn't have bothered to move from his hearthrug if he had known he was coming back for a child. Worse – an _untrained child_. A child that was attending the Shinobi Academy at an age when others, like Pakkun's own human, were already rising through the ranks.

"-but it's 'cause they don't like me there-"

Pakkun conned him, and Rikku only realised that he was meeting a damn human puppy minutes before Naruto had walked in – not even walked in, worse, had just stopped in front of the door, stinking of fear so much that the presence of grilled chicken was just an afterthought.

"-sometimes I think they don't like me anywhere, but if everyone hated me then I wouldn't have Kana-san and Ya-san and Juuji and Annai and Pakkun-san and Rikku. You don't hate me. Right?"

The chicken was a blatant bribe, but not the kid's fault. Rikku wouldn't hold that against him. Besides, the boy had shared happily, and took far less than a half for himself, nattering on about ramen.

And Naruto's initial reaction…

Rikku knew that he had been through a mill, and hadn't come out of the experience whole. He was getting old, and that last screw-up of a mission had left him leery of going back into the field. For Inari's sake, he had _flinched_ at the sight of a kunai raised at a snail's pace.

"Rikku?" Naruto said hesitantly.

And Naruto. Frightened almost all the time, but brave well past the line of sanity, and determined to sodding _love_ everyone who didn't hate him on sight. Rikku knew exactly why Pakkun had asked him to do it, and knew that he was going to do it, for that very same reason – there was a spark of a special sort of enlightenment in the puppy, and it was far too easy to put out something like that.

It was a damn miracle it hadn't been smothered yet.

Rikku huffed. "No."

Naruto smiled and talked.

x

Kana scowled at the signatures on the bottom.

Ya cast a split-second glance her way, and then continued staring forwards. His teeth were clenched together with too much force, but Kana only noticed because she had known him for so long.

"Mitsuhara-sensei is the Head of the Academy," Naruto explained, leaning around Ya's shoulder so that he, too could study his school report. "He's mostly deaf. I could, like, prank him. A lot. But… that's wrong. Doing that to a person who is… uh…"

"Handicapped," Kana offered absently.

"Right," Naruto humpfed. "And he's old. And tired all the time. Sick, too, but not as bad as Suzuran-sensei."

"I think," Ya said solemnly, "that he might be improved with a tanto between the fifth and sixth rib."

Kana nodded.

Naruto frowned. "Isn't the heart there?"

"I'm seeing evidence to the contrary," Kana growled. "I very much doubt your Mitsuhara-sensei has a heart at all. Or a brain, for that matter."

Naruto expressively rolled his eyes. "I told you – he's got a brain, it's just old and not working properly anymore."

"Yes, that seems to be the case," Ya agreed.

Kana wanted to plot out revenge for the subpar treatment of her pup, but she relied on her partner to be the voice of reason in emotionally charged situations, so she let herself cool off.

"What are your plans for the evening?" she inquired.

"Ramen," Naruto replied predictably, and then shrugged. "Or maybe teriyaki, if Rikku feels like coming along. Otherwise they'd just glare me away from the restaurant."

"Do you want this back?" Ya inquired, stabbing a claw into the report.

Naruto paused, and after a while shrugged again. "I'd have wanted to show it to Rikku, if it was any good. But it's not. So I'd be happier if he didn't see it."

As he left, Kana and Ya shared a look. They would make sure that Rikku would see the report – so he would know what he was up against.

x

Whatever else the pup might have been, he was determined. He never slacked off. He was more likely to train himself into pliant exhaustion than to ask for an afternoon off.

In fact, after a few weeks of their acquaintance, Rikku came to recognise the delicate balancing act Kana had set up with the child – luring him away from physical exercise to more cerebral topics whenever Naruto seemed like he was about to hurt himself trying. Now, months later, he too had it down to an art.

Thus, in the wake of the Academy's lauded Sports' Day (a venue for parents to come in and inspect what their progeny was learning, geared specifically toward civilian families that had little idea of how to read the Shinobi Academy report card), Rikku was lying on a tree branch above Training Ground 22, feeling uncomfortably akin to a lion.

"Rikku! Are you here? Oi, Rikku… Okay, if you've been taken hostage, hoot like an owl."

Rikku rolled his eyes. He couldn't dislike Naruto – he knew that was as good as impossible to do since he had first encountered the boy – but on some days it was damn hard to remember that this creature was supposed to be a potential shinobi.

"Up here, Naruto," Rikku grumbled.

The boy didn't yelp – one horrendous vice trained out of him, _finally_ – before he glanced up and happily clapped his hands. "Rikku! How did you get up there?"

Instead of answering verbally, Rikku rose on all four paws and made his careful but casual way downright along the tree-trunk.

"Whoa!" Naruto wind-milled his arms to express how deeply impressed he was. "How did you do that?"

Oh, for Inari's sake! Rikku balefully eyeballed the Hokage monument. The boy lived in the centre of a ninja village and he had never seen anyone chakra walking? There were ANBU lurking near the tops of vertical walls on every major street!

Rikku looked at his human partner askance. Naruto wasn't stupid. He was sometimes oblivious, and impulsive, but he wasn't unobservant. He had observed enough about people to create the _Oiroke no Jutsu_. Rikku thought it was hilarious – and apt – and worked so well that Naruto completely deserved to have a new element acknowledged.

"I used chakra to stick, Naruto," Rikku explained – as much as he felt was necessary to explain.

It wasn't as though the child didn't have enough chakra to figure it out through trial and error. Perhaps he would even manage to do it today.

"Oh!" Naruto exclaimed. "Like when people try to steal your stuff, but you glue it to your palms, and they can't steal it without ripping your arm off, and most of them give up." Naruto solemnly nodded to himself. "There aren't many people that try to rip off your arms."

Homicidal impulses, Rikku mused. Par for the course when dealing with this man-child. It was doing wonders for his control; if very little for his blood-pressure, owing to continually suppressed aggression.

"I think…" Naruto muttered to himself. "It could… but then it… _oh bugger_."

Rikku didn't even consider chastising him for the language. What was the sodding point, anyway? Kid was already practically a ninja – no one would stop him becoming one officially.

" _Yosh_! Here I go-"

He took the tree at a full-tilt run.

Rikku wasn't surprised.

"Owww! Damn you, tree! And damn you, gravity!"

Rikku wasn't surprised when Naruto fell off the tree and broke his ankle either.

"Ow-ow-ow! Not fair, Kana-san is gonna marinate and fry me for this…"

Rikku was, however, _stunned_ when Naruto grabbed his foot, tugged it back to the right position, waited for a bit, and then _took the tree at a run again_.

Only now did Rikku recall that the boy had asked him about accelerated healing, back in the beginning.

This wasn't normal.

And, unless Rikku's nose was going, Pakkun was in this stinking heap of shit up to his amusingly asymmetrical ears.

x

"Naruto," Rikku growled.

Pakkun startled out of treading the air – probably dreaming of hunting butterflies or something equally as beastly – and rolled over onto his stomach. He glared.

Rikku waited, idly watching a dragonfly flit this way and that.

Pakkun sighed. "I wondered how long it would take you to ask. Sit down and I will tell you what I know about the tenth of October. But you can't tell Naruto-chan."

Rikku nodded and flopped down onto the grass. Good thing that he was discovering the secrets surrounding Naruto now rather than later – no one in the Pack has yet wised up that Rikku's primary loyalty had already shifted to his human shinobi partner.

x

"…I'm gonna kick butt and graduate first of the class and all those wimpy clan babies will eat my wind!"

" _Dust_ ," Kana corrected, although she strongly suspected that Naruto knew perfectly what he was saying. She sighed.

"Suuure." Naruto pouted. "Please, please, please, Kana-san?" His eyes widened and for a moment there she could have sworn they were pulling at her soul.

Damn human puppy.

The fact was that, while Kana had been with Naruto since he was a toddler – long enough now for him to naturally regard her as a substitute parent – she was not actually his parent or guardian or any other adult with rights to decide for a human child. He did not need her approval to apply for an early examination. Still, she would rather not point this out to him; it was all she could do to get him to listen to her when he _believed_ he had to.

"Naruto…"

"Kana-san? Pleeease?"

How could she say no to someone that radiated so much hope? She knew that Naruto faced daily injustice and cruelty at that place, mostly in tiny forms, but no less valid for it. His marks did not reflect his skills and knowledge – then again, he was not so good yet that he would pass the gennin test. Should she tell him to try despite the near-certainty that he would fail?

Yes, she thought. She should. It would give him an idea of what was expected of him; he might become a little more objective in his skill-assessment. It would be easier to convince him to wait next time.

"Try your best."

Naruto jumped and punched the air with both fists. " _Yatta_!"

Kana would be worried, but, well – she knew that he would take failure as a challenge to do better next time, so she settled down and watched him flutter around his apartment, telling his plants how he would take the exams by storm and blow them out of the water.

Implausible, but cute.

x

"I can have a dog in class with me?" Naruto yelled, disbelieving and stunned and wildly hopeful at the same time. No more loneliness! No more unfairness! One of his friends will come with him and make sure that nobody messes with him by making toothy grr-faces-

"No, Naruto!" Mizuki shouted back, stabbing his finger in the air in Naruto's direction. "Kiba is from the Inuzuka clan! He has special permission to learn to work with his partner."

Naruto puffed up his cheeks and crossed his arms. "So, I can't have a dog, but he can, just because he's from a clan."

The other kids, who had been snickering and whispering up to this point started yelling too.

"Idiot! Where would _you_ get a ninja dog?!"

"Sheesh! What dog would even voluntarily work with someone like you, peabrain?"

"I know _ninken_!" Naruto insisted, raising his voice over the din of mocking protests from his classmates. What did they know? They didn't even know the right name for ninja dogs. So, nothing. _They_ were the idiots.

"Liar!" Sakura and Kurome yelled at once.

"Yeah!" Kiba agreed, personally insulted. "Tell him, Akamaru!"

The puppy yipped, refusing to take part in the argument, and huddled down in the hood Kiba's jacket.

"That's enough!" Mizuki called out. "Now that we've settled this, go back to your seats. Anyone still standing in three seconds will do detention-"

There was a mad scramble in all directions, kids pushing each other down in the haste to get to their assigned seats.

"-with Mitsuhara-sensei!" Mizuki finished cheerfully. "One… two…"

Naruto plopped down and pouted. He wished he could have Juuji or Annai with him here. Or Rikku. Rikku was awesome, and a little scary, but he knew lots of important things. He would probably be able to stay quiet, too. And maybe he could explain all those things that made no sense to Naruto and bite his ankle when Naruto got too sleepy to pay attention to the lesson anymore and… well… it was a nice daydream, but it would never come true.

Naruto was just a kid, and not exactly the kind adults called a genius, but he knew what this was: politics.

So he glared at Kiba's back, and glared even harder when Kiba's puppy stuck its fluffy white head out of Kiba's hood, and resigned himself to business as usual.

He had no clan, no family, no privileges. No advantages. But he would get to the top one day – he looked out of the window at the Hokage monument – and everyone would have to admit that he was the most awesome ninja in the world, and no one would ever, ever be able to accuse him of having unfair advantages.

"Loser," Hanako hissed at him from Kurome's other side.

Naruto smiled. She was right. He was at the very bottom. But, them, where better to take off from?

One day, these people would all eat his… _dust_.

x

Another semester passed, summer break came by, and Naruto still hadn't made friends.

Well, he made one sort-of friend, because Akamaru-chan definitely counted as a person, but he was a puppy. Naruto only remembered Annai when she was that tiny a little bit, but he could tell that Aka-chan still had to grow loads before he would become a real ninken.

Lucky him, though, that he didn't have to pass the tests at the Academy. Stupid tests.

"Are you happy to go back to school tomorrow?" Naruto asked quietly, crouching behind the dumpster at the mouth of an alley off of the Merchant Lane.

Aka-chan yipped.

Naruto fed him another treat from the pouch at his belt. Aka-chan wasn't yet strong or fast enough to grab the whole pouch from Naruto, but he would get there. Naruto maintained that he would have gotten there faster, if Kiba didn't hold him back so much.

A fat man strolled past, and Aka-chan growled. Or, okay, more like rumbled. Naruto respected him too much to go anywhere the p-word. Dogs didn't do the p-word thing.

"Yes," Naruto agreed. "One day soon, after what he said about that kunoichi last week. If he wanted that kind of thing, he should have gone to the Akasen."

Aka-chan yipped quizzically, but Naruto only shook his head.

"When you're a bit older, I'll explain it to you. Or, more likely, Kiba's mum will explain it to the both of you. Bet Kiba's face will go red like a strawberry."

Aka-chan whined.

"Hey, don't be like that. You know that Kiba embarrasses real easy, and I didn't even- that's him!" Naruto crouched yet lower, unhappy about the closeness of the dumpster that pretty much overrode his nose. He wasn't used to relying only on his eyes.

Nevertheless, the merchant they had been waiting for finally came out of his shop, locked up, took one last slobbering look at the displayed glassware, and left home, where without a doubt warm dinner waited for him.

Aka-chan knew his task. He trotted out of the alley and found a good spot at the corner of the street; there he sat and waited until the air was clear. Then he barked, puppy-softly.

Naruto leapt out and into action. The spray paint stank, but he knew it wasn't okay to destroy other people's things, so the glass would remain safely inside; this was the best way to get back at bastards who were nasty to others. He sprayed big, purple 'I KICK PUPPIES' all over the front of the store, and added a picture of a sad puppy sitting on his haunches.

He finished just in time. As soon as the picture was done, Naruto's lookout started barking his little head off, hard as he could.

Naruto whistled, and the two conspirators disappeared into the falling dusk, unaware of the trio of masked ninja standing on a nearby roof and watching with, frankly, very little inclination to report what they had seen.

"Must have been at least a chuunin, to do it so fast," Rabbit mused idly.

"Probably specialising in genjutsu, too," added Owl. "Else we'd have noticed somebody."

"Think he'd take commissions?" Dove inquired, a little too eager for anyone's comfort.

Owl snorted. "I bet."

x

On the first day of the semester, Naruto spent an hour in the morning standing in the corner, and would have spent a good part of the afternoon doing the same, only he escaped out the window the second Suzuran-sensei's back was turned.

On the second day of the semester, the class was already abuzz when Naruto dragged himself in and flopped down in his usual seat in the back row.

"…you hear about…"

"…Daddy was called to help investigate…."

"…my Mom said it was the work of an avenging angel-"

Kids were whispering among themselves, excited, with a little bit of hero-worshipping awe in their words. It was the same tone they used when talking about the Fourth Hokage, or the Sannin.

There was a yip.

Naruto leaned down under the desk and hoisted Aka-chan up onto the seat next to him.

Aka-chan excitedly jumped in place, wagging his little tail and excitedly yip-yapping.

"Really?" Naruto breathed. He couldn't believe it. He looked around again, at all those boys and girls with flushed faces that tried to one-up each other with who had more information. Even the mostly mute Uchiha clone on the other end of the back row was trying to listen in, though he pretended like he wasn't. "Us?"

Aka-chan barked in agreement. Naruto offered him a low-five, but then Kiba crashed over the top of the desk and into a seat, almost crushing the puppy, who barely managed to jump out of the way. A moment later Kiba had Aka-chan stuffed in his hood again.

The puppy whined, but somewhere in the middle the whine became a yawn, and it didn't take long for him to decide to curl up and go to sleep in the soft warmth of Kiba's hoodie.

"'s somethin', ain't it?" Kiba said with a grin.

'It was me,' Naruto thought, but the words got stuck in his throat. 'It was me,' he wanted to yell as he watched Ino and Sakura lean close to one another and unsubtly stare at Sasuke the girl-bait. 'Me,' he repeated to himself when Shikamaru listed to the side and went to sleep on Chouji's shoulder.

 _Me_.

He pulled out a book and set it on the desk in front of him. Then he snagged a pencil from Kiba's pocket and drew a set of cat ears and tail on the picture of the Fourth Hokage in Chapter Eleven.

But he still didn't say anything, because he wanted Kana-san and Ya-san and Pakkun-san and Rikku to be the first to know.


	5. The Ninja Way

A/N: Thank you for your support. There is reasonable chance for more stories in this verse, but I am not promising anything. Enjoy.

Brynn

x

Chapter Five: The Ninja Way

x

Naruto took a deep sniff and when he determined that no one was around, he cast the Oiroke.

Kana leapt to her feet and came to stand at Naruko-chan's – as Naruto insisted on calling his female forms – side. This Naruko was still far too top-heavy for any combat situation, but they weren't expecting combat on this outing, and Kana judged the clothing serviceable.

"Where to, Kana-san?" Naruto asked, shifting from foot to foot as he strove to determine his new centre of gravity. Fortunately, he hadn't tried anything as risky as high heels.

"Let's start with the tea shop," Kana replied, and with a subtle Henge changed into the kind of dog that would be expected to accompany a young civilian housewife of the presumably gold-digging sort. She had to wonder if Naruto had done this on purpose; he was very naïve in some ways, but in others he outstripped his peers by leagues. "It offers the best vantage points."

When Kana first learned of Naruto's new hobby, she couldn't find it in herself to disapprove.

Hobbies were healthy outlets, which ninja needed, and Naruto _really_ needed, and this one was more or less training for the future. It also let him get back at some of the nasty swamp mud that crawled around this village and masqueraded as people. Maybe she shouldn't have encouraged him… but then, he was a member of her Pack, however unofficially, and contrary to popular believe a kicked dog didn't just roll over and show its belly.

It bit back.

"I am proud of you, Naruto," Kana said quietly as they settled down at a table, and politely pretended she didn't see Naruto wipe a couple of tears.

"Are you alright, Miss?" a concerned waiter asked.

Naruko-chan looked up with her wide, watery eyes.

The waiter startled, and then bowed three times in rapid succession. "Please, accept the first pot of tea on the house, _on the house_!" He bowed again for good measure.

Naruto, absolutely stumped, blinked a few times, and then smiled with such brightness as if the sun just came up. "That's so nice of you! Thank you!"

He waited until the waiter hurried away to turn to Kana, and let the smile dim a bit. "It is nice. One day, I'm gonna find out why these things never happen to me when I look like me."

Kana nodded, and nudged Naruto's shoulder with her nose. She wasn't at all looking forward to it, but that was a pile of crap that would have to be faced on another day.

Today, they were staking out a lifelong gennin that tended to drink his disappointments away and drunkenly lie about all the intimate encounters he had had with various high-profile kunoichi. Naruto had received the tip anonymously, with only a doodled Dove instead of a signature.

x

The ANBU wasn't on duty, but she found herself wearing her full uniform and standing guard between the chimneys and the antennae on the roof above Mistward Road. She watched a drunken man stumble over a nearly invisible ninja wire strung above the last stair, and fall hands-forward into a vat of milk. He flopped out of it just to knock over a broom _someone must have forgotten_ on the porch – but which so conveniently hit a bag of cinnamon sugar as it fell and sent a sweet, smelly cloud everywhere around.

The drunk went down in a bout of hacking cough after he had inhaled some of the powder, but he wasn't in any real danger, and all that flopping got him more thoroughly sugared.

She watched as he gradually calmed down and tried to get some of the sticky substance off, only to succeed in spreading it further. He eventually gave in and went to sleep right there on the porch.

By morning he would be covered in ants – and justice thus served.

Dove sighed happily.

Two sets of feet landed lightly on the roof to the left.

"Days like these, I miss Hound," Dove confided nonchalantly. "He really loved that kid."

"Hound?" inquired Owl.

"Our former Captain," explained Rabbit.

"Oh. Sorry."

"Nah, shorty," Dove assured him, and companionably chucked his shoulder, which sent him crashing straight into the nearest chimney. "He's not dead. Just got pulled out of ANBU." She paused and looked across the street and up.

She wasn't sure if she saw anything, but the tickle in her left nostril told her that the wily old bastard had been watching the spectacle, too, and now he was off home to tell his cute little bed-warmer all about the Phantom of Konoha.

She shook her head and decided it was time for bed for her too. She cast a considering glance at Owl, then huffed, grabbed Rabbit's wrist and dragged him off with her.

x

Four pairs of eyes critically surveyed the targets. Most were riddled with shuriken. A piece of one clattered to the ground, completely severed.

Rikku silently nodded.

Kana-san barked joyfully. "You have done well, Naruto."

"Really?"

"Really," Pakkun-san confirmed.

Naruto punched the air. Then something occurred to him. "So I can try to graduate again when the semester ends?"

Ya-san stopped grinning. He looked at Pakkun, who looked back, and they communicated, not like dogs, but like ninja. Silently.

After a while, Pakkun-san said: "I don't see why not."

Naruto was a little nervous about it. He hadn't been before, because then he was absolutely sure he would make it – who needed three tries, anyway? He hadn't ever doubted that he would pass on his first try.

And then he failed.

Now he felt sort of like a colt, a little deer with tiny spindly legs, that wasn't sure where he was stepping. Puppies weren't ever like that. They started rolling around and licking at everything, because right from the start they couldn't use their eyes. But then they'd begin to see, and running would come naturally to them. Naruto always thought he was more a puppy than anything else.

But apparently not.

"Are you sure?" he asked. He didn't really doubt Pakkun-san or Ya-san, but if he failed the second attempt then there would be only one last attempt left, and he just knew that if it came down to it, he would make himself so sick that he would fail out of fear that he would fail, and that would just be unfair!

"How about this, Naruto-kun," mused Ya-san, looking over his fluffy shoulder at the chair, where Naruto was hanging upside-down with his feet wedged into the gaps in the backrest and droopy hair almost touching the floor. "Before it's time to send the application, we'll invite Rikku for dinner and talk about it. If he thinks you're ready, you'll try. What do you say?"

Naruto yelped, freed his feet, rolled over on the floor and jumped at Ya-san to hug the stuffing out of him.

He staunchly ignored the twin sighs his adoptive teachers exchanged over his head.

x

The pranking was kind of too cool to gossip about, Naruto decided after a long and painful bout of thinking.

He wanted to shout it from the rooftops – _I am the guy who is pranking everyone_! He never intended to keep it a secret. But then, he had never thought anyone would like it.

It was such a strange thing, to hear people praise stuff he had done. It was so fantastic! Naruto soaked it all up like ramen – it was the greatest ever! But, Naruto wasn't stupid. People often called him stupid, or believed he was stupid – and other things, too, like rude or violent or just plain evil – but none of that really made him stupid. In this, he believed Rikku more than anyone.

And Rikku had said: "Naruto, you need to learn to stop and think. You are capable of thinking… you just always forget that part and spring straight into action." And then he rolled his eye. But he definitely knew beyond a doubt that Naruto wasn't stupid.

In any case, because he _wasn't_ stupid, Naruto knew that people only liked the stuff he did because they didn't know it was him who did it. So he decided that pranking was a _Secret_. And he challenged himself to keep it for as long as he could.

Which turned out to be just a little more than a year.

"Che, Naruto-baka. You think _you_ can graduate early?" asked a squinty girl that didn't even go to class with him. That made sense, since nearly all these kids were older, but she definitely shouldn't have talked to him like she knew him.

"You bet I can!" Naruto exclaimed, and thought about how Kana-san and Pakkun-san and Rikku all told him he could do it. He had trained so hard! He definitely had it down now. "I'm gonna be Hokage!"

She laughed. And so did a lot of other people – mostly students, but Mizuki-sensei was giggling in that fake way of his over by the door to the class where they would be doing the writing part of the tests.

Naruto looked at the floor and scuffed his sandal against a loose board. He gritted his teeth. He wasn't going to _say_ anything.

He was going to _show_ them.

x

Only he didn't.

His Academy style taijutsu _sucked feline ass_ , and though his throwing was good, he didn't manage to make a single passable clone. And then his written test came back with 13 percent.

And Naruto couldn't take the laughing anymore, because he knew he wasn't stupid, and he _had_ studied, and this – this – he waved the marked test in the air like he could shake the red writing off of it – was a lying piece of paper!

"Naruto, what are you doing?" Mitsuhara-sensei demanded, half-blind and half-deaf and a moron who couldn't count higher than to thirteen, obviously.

"This is wrong!" Naruto insisted. "I've done better than this!"

The Head of Academy scowled. "You should have studied instead of playing pranks, _Uzumaki_. Perhaps if you spent less time painting graffiti at night and more time with a textbook, you would not have _failed_."

"Naruto?!"

"That idiot?"

"Impossible!"

Naruto suddenly became aware that every single one of the gathered students was staring at his back. He was too scared to turn around and face them. He wanted to run, but the only way out was blocked by old Mitsuhara, and Naruto was trapped.

"There's no way that dumbass is the Phantom of Konoha."

"Well, he is rude…"

"That's right! Mama said the Phantom should be _spanked_ for being so rude."

"My Dad said the ANBU has orders to catch him and give him to Torture and Interrogation," someone announced very seriously.

"Yeah, my Father said whoever catches him gets promoted on the spot."

A wave of killing intent rose behind Naruto. They were going to beat him up, he knew – and there were no animal-faced ninja here to stop them. They were probably going to beat him until he died. He had to… he had to call Rikku-

"Now, now," said Mizuki-sensei, smiling and raising his hands. "Let's all calm down. You know that a ninja always obeys orders given by higher rank. Listen to me, and listen well. Anyone who so much as touches Naruto-kun will instantly fail the exam."

The killing intent grew stronger, but at least no one moved from their spot.

Naruto bit his thumb, ready to summon the second anyone would try to attack him. He glanced around, this way and that, searching for an exit.

Finally, someone moved. It was an adult ninja, but young. Naruto didn't remember ever seeing him before, but when he came closer he smelled familiar. He smelled like dogs and books and ink and strawberries. He also smelled a little bit like fear, but he wasn't scowling at Naruto, and he moved slowly, like you had to move when you came to animals when they could spook and run away.

He was trying not to spook Naruto.

A drop of blood fell from Naruto's thumb to the floor. The stranger watched it land and sink into the wood. Then he went down on one knee, looked Naruto in the eye, and said four words Naruto knew he would never forget:

" _I_ like your pranks."

x

"Ah," said the Old Man, watching Naruto scarf down the second bowl of ramen, "I heard you almost got into trouble after the exam today."

Naruto paused mid-slurp. Slowly, he put the bowl down on top of the counter and set his chopsticks across it. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and his hands into his trousers. Then he narrowed his eyes at the Old Man.

The Old man was Hokage, and Naruto always really, really respected him, and sorta maybe loved him, too, the way you love people who you want to be family with, but aren't. Old Man Hokage was the best ninja in Konoha, and Naruto wanted to be like him.

And the best ninja must be the best liar, so he would be best at telling the truth, surely?

"Mitsuhara-sensei lied," Naruto said. He thought maybe Mitsuhara-sensei also told Naruto's secrets to get people mad at Naruto, and to get Naruto hurt, but those things he couldn't prove. He could definitely prove the lie.

"Did he?" The Old Man raised his eyebrows and looked over the counter at old man Ichiraku. "What did he lie about?"

Naruto reached into the inside pocket of his jacket for his test paper. He had bought the jacket as Naruko-chan, and Kana-san helped him pick it out, and he wanted to proudly wear it as a brand new gennin of Konoha. He wouldn't, now. Still, the test paper was there, folded up almost neatly, with a few tiny red blood stains and a lot, _lot_ of red ink stains.

He hesitated, very briefly, and then handed the test over.

The Old Man read through all the writing very quickly, and once he was finished he pulled out his pipe and lit it. Then he pushed a few more credits over to old man Ichiraku and said: "Two more bowls of whatever Naruto-kun wants. He deserves it."

Naruto decided that meant that the Old Man believed him. Or, at least, he didn't think Naruto was lying.

It was… disappointing.

Two bowls of ramen, after old Mitsuhara-bat cheated him out of becoming ninja.

Naruto wanted to punch something, but that would have to wait for training later. Maybe Rikku would run with him around Konoha – run and run and run until Naruto was too tired to think and just fell asleep. He grabbed his ramen again and finished it. No reason to waste ramen.

Both old men sighed, almost at the same time.

"Sucks," grumbled old man Ichiraku.

"Ah," muttered Old Man Hokage, "perhaps it is better this way."

Naruto felt like they dunked him in ice. So… so the Hokage didn't want him to become ninja either? So he had been lying… all this time. And Naruto had trusted him.

Maybe Naruto was still a little bit stupid.

"C-can I have that back now?" he asked, grabbing at the test.

The Old Man stashed it away faster than Naruto could finish closing his fist.

"I am sorry, Naruto-kun. I need to show this to a friend of mine. Now, enjoy the rest of your ramen – I am already late for my appointment as is."

It wasn't the poor ramen's fault, but Naruto did not enjoy it. At all.

x

Kana felt herself becoming tired with worrying so incessantly. Yet worse was the pervading notion of helplessness – much as she knew her intervention had probably saved Naruto, in one way or another, she felt like she was continually coming short of what she had promised.

It wasn't until Naruto's third year at the Academy when something finally changed.

"We've got a new teacher," Naruto reported in between two onigiri. "His name is Iruka-sensei."

The boy lapsed into thought, and although he didn't smell hurt, Kana instantly pricked her ears. "Naruto? Did this teacher do something to you?"

She was fairly proficient in her own right, but she would inform both Ya and Rikku, and the three of them together were more than enough to hunt and take down some upstart who thought he could bully a child just because that child supposedly had no support system.

She could almost smell the blood.

Naruto prolonged chewing the bite he had in his mouth for as long as he viably could, and then a bit longer still. Finally he swallowed and said: "He showed me what I do wrong in the second kata. I… I didn't even have to ask."

Kana took a deep breath and closed her eyes as Naruto's fingers found the correct spot between her shoulder-blades and scratched. It was too early to hope but maybe, just maybe, her human pup's life was taking a turn for the better.

When she returned home, her first steps led straight to Ya to tell him the news.

He wasn't too hopeful either.

x

Kana-san and Ya-san came over for dinner. They invited Pakkun-san, too. Pakkun-san brought rabbit.

And they wanted to know _everything_ about Iruka-sensei.

"He doesn't smell like hatred or anger," Naruto explained. "Or, maybe, anger, just a bit, but not much. And mostly not at me. And he acts angry all the time, but it's just an act. He's hardly ever angry. Mostly he just smells like hurt." It was _really hard_ to explain. Adults felt all sorts of things, and they felt a lot of them at the same time. They were the least logical creatures Naruto had ever sniffed. _Least_. They made no sense, scent-wise. "Like sadness," he added. That one, he knew. The Memorial Stone smelled like it.

Also, Naruto imagined _he_ smelled like it on the eleventh of October, every year, but he couldn't be sure, because you couldn't actually smell yourself. Your brain filtered it out. That's how it worked. Naruto had read a scroll about it once.

"All the time?" Ya-san asked, all weird about it. Not quite upset. Just, what was the word… _disconcerted_. He was _disconcerted_.

"No," Naruto said quickly. And maybe that wasn't entirely true – Iruka-sensei smelled sad a lot, as in, more often than he didn't – but Naruto knew that if he said 'yes', Ya-san would get a wrong impression. It was hard to explain right, mostly because Naruto didn't really understand it himself. He just knew that Iruka-sensei was not an enemy. "Mostly just when… huh… when he's not doing anything. During recess. Or when it's quiet study time. He sits and watches the class and stinks like hurt."

"Oh." Ya-san didn't lose all the worry, but he looked about ready to give the new Academy teacher the benefit of the doubt. "Perhaps he lost a friend, Naruto-chan."

"Maybe," Naruto allowed. That didn't mean a whole lot. As people said – and they did say it a lot – everyone lost someone in the Kyuubi attack. Naruto hated the Kyuubi for making so many people hurt so bad. He was pretty sure his parents had died during the attack too… he couldn't be sure… but he sort of hoped it was like that. He loved Kana-san and Ya-san, but being an orphan was a hundred times better than being unwanted by his real parents.

He was already obviously unwanted by the village. And the Academy. The teachers there. Except, so far, Iruka-sensei.

"But," Naruto said, recalling the smell, "he definitely has a lover."

Pakkun choked and splattered his coffee all over the floor. "A…" He choked again, and ended up coughing. Barkfully.

"Aw, come on, Pakkun-san!" Naruto cajoled, sucking in a noodle that didn't seem to end for a long time, before it ripped off and spattered droplets of broth across his cheek. "I'm not a little kid. I know about all that stuff. And Iruka-sensei is definitely boinking someone on the regular. They live together, too. One of the animal-faced ninja."

That, Naruto thought, was called _deception_. An essential tool in a ninja's arsenal. It was the thing a ninja used when even approaching the truth made him feel like ripping his lungs out.

Ya-san laughed so hard his fur shook with it. His glasses got all steamed-up, too.

Pakkun-san glared at him, and when he realised that Ya-san cheerfully ignored the glare, he instead turned to Naruto and smiled, a little shallow, like he wasn't simply happy, but also like he meant it. "You have done well, Naruto-chan."

"I did?"

"You did," Kana-san confirmed.

Rikku came in then, carrying a paper bag full of deliciously smelling grilled chicken, and he flopped down onto the carpet next to Naruto, leaning into his side. Naruto put his hand on Rikku's back and rubbed, softly, alongside the scars but careful not to press where it might hurt.

Rikku shared his chicken with Naruto.

Later that evening, exhausted but filled with good food and hope and respect for Iruka-sensei, Naruto fell asleep with a brand new resolution: He didn't care so much about being the _Fire Shadow_ – but he would definitely become the _Will of Fire_.


	6. Sequel

Dear readers,

I have started posting the sequel to _Trust Your Nose_ called _Shinobi's Best Friends_. You can get to it through my profile – you all know the drill. Happy New Year!

Brynn


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